ISPRS-Annals ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences ISPRS-Annals ISPRS Ann. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci. 2194-9050 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/isprs-annals-IV-4-171-2018 INFLUENCE OF WORD-OF-MOUTH COMMUNICATION ON LARGE-SCALE EVACUATION AFTER A SEVERE EARTHQUAKE Osaragi T. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6327-3976 1 Tsuchiya T. 1 Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 Ookayama, Meguro, Tokyo, Japan 19 09 2018 IV-4 171 178 Copyright: © 2018 T. Osaragi 2018 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is available from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/IV-4/171/2018/isprs-annals-IV-4-171-2018.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/IV-4/171/2018/isprs-annals-IV-4-171-2018.pdf

Physical disaster in a serious earthquake (fires and street blockages), word-of-mouth communication (WOMC) among evacuees, and evacuation behaviors are modeled, and an evacuation behavior simulation is carried out. The influences of WOMC regarding the information about disaster and the locations of evacuation areas on a large-scale evacuation are observed. The simulation results demonstrate some new findings and highlight the importance of providing guides in tourist areas, where there are many people who have limited local geographical information. It is also shown that once false information has appeared in the process of WOMC among the wanderers, especially in locations with a high density of wanderers, the false information will spread quickly among the evacuees by WOMC and can negatively influence a large-scale evacuation.